Spanish Land Grant System
Still Creating Controversy

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —(AP)— It was 1748, and some Franciscan friars in Hopi country were fretting over the spiritual welfare of Indians they had recently converted to Christianity.

The converts were living near some Hopis who had rejected Christianity.

So they petitioned the Spanish governor of New Mexico to move the converts from Hopi country about 200 miles east, to the then-abandoned site of Sandia Pueblo north of Albuquerque.

One spring day that year, the lieutenant governor of New Mexico went to the land with the pueblo's new residents and laid out the boundaries. Two hundred fifty years later, his intentions are at the crux of a struggle over who will own part of the western face of the Sandia Mountains.

Last July, a federal district judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the U.S. Interior Department had made a mistake in denying an attempt by the pueblo to claim 10,000 acres in the Sandia Mountains. The land is now administered by the U.S. Forest Service.

The U.S. Agriculture Department, which includes the Forest Service, is deciding whether to appeal the ruling by U.S. District Judge Harold Greene.

Whoever wins, the outcome is likely to hinge on a debate between historians hired by the two sides about the establishment of Sandia Pueblo. Much of the debate boils down to the translation of a few Spanish words — whether they mean the foothills of the Sandia Mountains or the crest.

On that spring day in 1748, the lieutenant governor met with the pueblo's new residents and their priest, according to a report by Stanley Hordes, a historian hired by the Agriculture Department in the case.

The settlers consisted of descendants of Pueblo Indians who had fled their homes, including the original Sandia Pueblo, during the Pueblo Revolt 68 years before.

The Spanish governor liked the idea of a settlement at Sandia. In recent years, the land "had served as an avenue for Apache attacks upon the nearby Spanish settlements of Bernalillo and Alameda," Hordes wrote.

The lieutenant governor, Bernardo Antonio de Bustamante Tagle, measured out the boundaries.

According to Hordes, from the start the Spaniards intended the pueblo to extend one league — a little more than two miles — in each direction from the ruins of the pueblo's church.

At the heart of today's debate is the eastern boundary. In setting that boundary, Bustamante's act refers to "la sierra madre que llaman de Sandia," or "the mother mountain range they call Sandia."

According to Hordes, Bustamante meant the reference to be an indication of the direction of the boundary, not the boundary itself. The eastern boundary was intended to be the standard "pueblo league" from the Sandia church, he says, not the main ridge.

Other historians take a different view.

The Spaniards routinely used geographic features, including mountains, rivers and hills, to demarcate land grants, they say.

"There is ample evidence in the body of New Mexico land grants ... that the principle of using the top or middle of the feature is normal," said Rick Hendricks, a Spanish colonial historian who has been paid by Sandia Pueblo to do research.

When the Spanish meant something other than the crest of a mountain range, they used terms such as "brow," "skirt," or "foot" to make their intentions clear, said Chris Musello, adjunct faculty in the anthropology department at the University of New Mexico, who also has been paid to do research for Sandia Pueblo.

The argument over Bustamante's language would not come until more than two centuries after it was written. In the meantime, the United States won a war with Mexico, took possession of New Mexico, and tried to figure out what to do about all the Spanish land grants in the new territory.

In 1848, Mexico and the United States signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to end the Mexican War. The United States agreed to honor the Spanish land grants.

As part of that effort, the newly established Office of the Surveyor General hired David V. Whiting to translate the 1748 act of possession that established the pueblo.

Whiting translated "la sierra madre que llaman de Sandia" as "the main ridge" when it should have just said "the mountain range," Hordes said.

Hordes speculates that Whiting's translation may have been influenced by a bias he had against the Hispanic population, which Hordes thought was trying to overthrow the U.S. government.

Whiting's translation as the "main ridge," the pueblo says, is correct.

Despite Whiting's translation, in November 1859 a surveyor named Reuben E. Clements set the eastern boundaries of the pueblo along the foothills, instead of at the crest.

The late Myra Ellen Jenkins, state archivist and historian for 20 years, wrote in a report done for the pueblo that Clements' survey was "superficial at best, and incompetent to all appearances."

Clements' surveys had been rejected before by the Office of Surveyor General for failing to take into account natural features, Musello said.

Then there was the incident with the Comanches. Clements had been captured by the Indians, who stole his surveying equipment and threatened to kill him, Musello said.

But Hordes says Clements appears to have done his best to connect the boundary points cited by Whiting.

Whatever the case, Clements' survey was the basis for future maps and the patent issued by Congress on Nov. 1, 1864. The pueblo says it didn't recognize the mistake until a century later when its traditional use of the land for religious and other purposes started to conflict with the Forest Service's administration of the land.

That conflict set in motion the legal dispute that resulted in Judge Greene's recent decision.

Opponents of the Sandia claim say Greene ignored Hordes' 1996 report. Says Musello, "There's a very different side."